Branded
by Chaos Ride
Summary: Ella had seen them, but never noticed. The thick black numbers set in the flock's skin told a story she had never heard.


**Hello, my people! I have returned, at last. I'm working on Echoes Of War, but in the mean time, I finished this story.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride, or any of her family. It's James Patterson's sandbox, I'm just building castles in it. **

**On the same line; there is no proof that any of these exist. It fits in with the storyline, and sounds plausible, but isn't ever mentioned anywhere in the series.**

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_Ella had seen them, but never noticed, until now. And now that she's seen it, it was like she was hypersensitive to them._

_They were black numbers, tattooed darkly into skin, though slightly faded with age._

The first time she actually noticed them, it had only been with a vague, passing interest.

Nudge had asked if she could borrow an old shirt to work in, saying something about trying to make an old car work. Ella agreed, and laid on Max's bed as Nudge changed, facing her, and still prating on as usual.

"What's that?" Ella wasn't sure if she interrupted the other girl, but it didn't really seem to matter. The Hispanic girl's eyes were set on the black numbers, neat and orderly, etched into Nudge's skin, right above her hip bone.

Ella vaguely remembered Jeb ranting about the flock wanting to get tattoos, but never heard anything beyond that. Even if this was her tattoo, it made no sense, just a string of numbers with a single decimal. Maybe it meant something to Nudge, though.

"What's what?" Nudge followed the other's eyes to her hip, before a look of understanding passed over her face.

"The school did it. It's kinda like a brand. Any experiment that was labeled successful got one." Nudge finishes putting on the shirt, tugging it to fall over the top of her jeans, smoothing it down easily.

"Successful?" Ella echoed, eyebrows furrowing confusedly.

A bitter smile stretches across the other's dark features. "It means we made it to the year mark, alive and kicking. For the most part, anyway." And then the tech wizard was gone, breezing out the door and back to the Frankencar in front of the house, waiting to be brought back to life.

_Since that conversation, the 'brands' were almost always at the front of her mind. It was distracting, to say the least._

_Ella knew she wouldn't stop thinking about them until they made more sense._

60125.007. _That had been Nudge's number. Seemingly completely random, but Ella knew it had to meet something. She scribbled it down on a spare piece of paper, before stuffing it away under her mattress._

Max's was the next one she saw and noticed. At first glance, it looked like her half-sister had gotten a tramp stamp, until Ella noticed the numbers.

60125.003

The black stood out against her skin brightly, like it was meant to be noticed.

"Did it hurt?" Ella blurted, eyes still focused on where Max's hands were rapidly sorting through a cardboard box on the floor in front of her. The older of the two looked over her shoulder at the other, having been sitting facing away, and raised an eyebrow in question.

"When you got branded." She elaborated, eyeing the would-be tramp stamp obviously. Max freezes for a moment before straightening slowly, sitting up more and pulling her shirt down self-consciously.

"I don't remember it, but I would imagine so. It's a tattoo. Or some cruel version of it, anyway." A pregnant pause as chocolate eyes examine the human girl sitting cross legged on her bed, "Who told you?" Max is standing up slowly, knees popping and groaning after being folded in for the past hour.

"Nudge." Max settles down on the edge of the bed, looking uncomfortable.

"Sometimes… I hate the stupid thing. I mean, what sick bastard would tattoo a child? It shows how messed up our lives, and the world , really, are. They considered a miracle we lived a year, and still 'worked properly.' Like we were machines who outlasted their warranty or something." Ella couldn't but agree wholeheartedly. It was almost unbelievably horrible. Max continued, "But in the same breath, sometimes I'm almost…. Proud of it? It's proof of how strong I am, proof I'm a survivor." The blonde smiles, even if it doesn't reach her eyes, and flows to a standing position smoothly, before returning to her task of looking for old pictures from the box in Jeb's old office.

60125.003 _was added to the paper the next day with a M next to it. _

_Ella compares the two numbers, but can only draw two conclusions; they both start with the same five numbers, and share the same structural element. But even if they shared the numbers before the decimal, the actual numbers still didn't make sense. The girl kept figuring they had a deep, underlying meaning, until she realized that they were just standardized numbers, used for order and nothing else. Tattooed on children like cattle slated for the slaughterhouse, or a random barcode on something to buy in the store._

_Sickened at the very thought, Ella tucked away the sheet of paper again, though putting it up did nothing to stop the whirling thoughts in her mind.._

_She hated the School now more that ever._

She saw Gazzy's and Angel's on the same day.

They had just set up the above ground pool, and Iggy was cooking on the grill, so the younger three of the official flock decided to go swimming. Angel had asked Ella, in that creepy, 'I'm asking but really telling you to do it' way if she would go swimming with them. What else could the girl do but agree?

Angel had also asked if she would tie her tankini, and when Ella agreed, the younger turned away and swooped her hair out of the way and over her small, pale shoulder, revealing her tattoo.

The numbers were set on her shoulder blade, just above her wing joint, thick and dark, and newer looking than Nudge's or Max's.

60125.011

Ella didn't say anything about it, not wanting to worry the younger girl, but she really wondered where Gazzy's was.

"On his left shoulder. They thought they were being funny by making ours mirror images." At Ella's bewildered look, the younger girl tapped her temple lightly before smiling sweetly.

Later, when they were all in the pool, Ella saw the Gasman's brand, and took a moment to commit the numbers to memory.

60125.009

_Both numbers were added to the paper at a later point. Ella was really beginning to despise what these numbers symbolized._

Fang's was easy to see against his pale skin, and caught Ella's eye immediately when he walked into the kitchen one day, shirtless.

He had been mowing the yard, and came in for something to drink.

60125.004 was set on his right pectoral, a few inches above his nipple.

Instead of bringing it up, Ella averted her eyes and continued eating her sandwich slowly.

_Ella scribbled out the next number onto the sheet, and did a mental headcount, only to realize she was missing one number; Iggy's._

_She hadn't seen it, and she had even been looking!_

It took several days, but Ella finally built up the courage to ask the blind boy about it.

"Where's your brand? Like, the numbers?" Ella knew it sounded completely dumb, but she didn't know how else to ask.

He looked shocked for a moment before crooking a finger easily, beckoning her closer.

"Successful experiments got one, the ones who lived and fulfilled their purpose. My status went from success to failure when I went blind due to a surgery when I was five." He held up his left arm, as though it was an explanation. "Of course, I had had the mark since I was one, meaning it had been in my skin four years. They had just finished my second session of trying to laser it off when Jeb broke us out. It's still there, but just barely. If you're looking for it, you can see it."

And see it, she did.

The numbers were barely there, set in the middle of a shiny patch of skin that looked more like it had been burnt.

60125.005 in faded numbers, right in the middle of his forearm, Holocaust style.

Ella glided her fingers over it gingerly, feeling where the numbers raised to press more firmly against her fingertips, like braille.

"It just means even when everyone else thought I was a failure, I was too tough to die, just like this was too tough to be removed."

_She notices them all the time now, but hasn't talked about them again; there's no need, she understands._

_They're proof the flock survived, and that others were not so lucky._

_The codes were like serial numbers, or barcodes; proof these amazing kids ever existed at all._

_Black numbers, set into their skin years ago by a needle wielded by madmen, still glistened against the light. It was their battle scar, their proof they were alive._

_They were branded.._

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**There is no proof of the existence of these numbers, but it's been niggling at my mind. So I wrote it. **

**Okay, explanation time on the number choice.**

**60125 is just a random, serialized number.**

**Angel's is 60125.011 because she's the youngest, and would therefore have the highest number, assuming that they scientist went in numerical order. She's also called 'Experiment 11' in The Angel Experiment, and it would make sense that their number would coincide with their serial number.**

**Gasman's is 60125.009 because while he and Angel are related, there is a two year gap between them. Even if the flock were the School's main experimentation, they would more than likely still have a few others running.**

**Nudge's is 60125.007 for the same reason as Gazzy's.**

**Iggy's is 60125.005, but they tried to laser it off. When you have a tattoo removed, you go through anywhere in between 5 and 7 sessions to have it completely removed. Knowing the whitecoats, they didn't care about scarring, and may have only done 4 session in total to remove it. By halfway through the sessions, at the intensity they would have had the laser at, Iggy would have been in great pain, but the numbers would still be there. Even after there was no visible trace, it's likely you could have felt the numbers.**

**Fang's is 60125.003 and Max's is 60125.003, both are in direct numerical order, as well as Iggy's because they're the same age, meaning that they would have gotten the mark the same year, not leaving much time for other experiments to survive their demanded year period.**


End file.
